My passion is being pro-life. It drives and it motivates me. I find joy in being the voice for the unborn every day, even if it’s just in the smallest ways. There was a time in my life when you couldn’t have paid me a million dollars to truthfully and passionately say the statement above. I used to be pro-choice. Pro-choice to my very core and then everything changed… I had an abortion.

Australian prisons are investing heavily in trying to stop drugs getting into jails when they should be more focused on root causes, the Australian National Council on Drugs says. As Canberra's jail introduced two new drug-detection dogs on Wednesday, council executive director Gino Vumbaca called for more funding in prisons for addiction therapy and rehabilitation programs.

Bouquets to Jeff Kennett and the Beyond Blue organisation for their clear and appropriate condemnation of the actions, or rather inactions, of Dr Philip Nitschke in relation to the suicide death of a Perth man in the story that ran on the ABC's 7:30 report a little over a week ago.

The Australian Medical Board has suspended euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke, who has declared himself a victim of a political campaign and has vowed to fight the decision. The board last night used its emergency powers to suspend Dr Nitschke after ruling that he posed “a serious risk to the health and safety of the public’’.

Children exposed to frequent or excessive gambling could be more likely to become problem gamblers later in life, new research shows. Researchers from Swinburne University interviewed low, moderate and high-risk gamblers in Victoria, who described their earliest gambling experiences.

The Napthine government has clawed back lost political ground after an aggressive campaign attacking Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews' building union links. But four months from the November election, the Coalition continues to languish in a losing position, with the latest Age/Nielsen poll showing it trailing Labor 46 per cent to 54 per cent after distributing preferences using stated voting intentions.

NSW Labor will empower party members and MPs to directly vote for state leader next April, if John Robertson's position is challenged post-election, following the adoption of the major reform this weekend. NSW will become the seventh Labor branch to move to direct election of the parliamentary leader, placing pressure on Victoria and South Australia to adopt this reform or risk having it imposed by the national conference next year.

Harrowing eyewitness accounts from the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission and a team of medical experts say there is a mental health crisis on Christmas Island, confirming multiple suicide attempts and self-harm incidents.

This symbol, the Arabic letter for 'N', the first letter in the word 'Nazarat', has been painted on the houses of Christians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Mosul's Christians were told they had 24 hours to leave their city or convert to Islam. If they did not, they were told, they would be executed.

Emailing pornography in the workplace is not automatically a sackable offence, the Federal Court has ruled. Two Australia Post workers who were fired for sending porn on staff email accounts in 2010 will keep their jobs after an appeal was quashed on Wednesday.